2014-15
Professor Caroline Muessig
The Trinity Long Room Hub was delighted to welcome Prof Carolyn Muessig (University of Bristol) as a Visiting Research Fellow. Professor Muessig is Professor of Medieval Religion, in the Department of Religion and Theology, University of Bristol.
Professor Muessig specializes in the study of preaching in the Middle Ages as well as women in the medieval Church. She has just commenced a full-year study leave to write a book on stigmatics.
During her fellowship at Trinity Long Room Hub, she assessed the history of stigmatization in the Middle Ages and early modern period. Professor Muessig's research interrogates a variety of sources, including letters, sermons, saints lives, chronicles, art and inquisition proceedings, in order to explain why stigmatization became a somatic ideal in pre-modern Europe.
To this end, she studied the papal letters and inquisition material in the Manuscripts and Archives Research Library, Trinity College, Dublin. In line with the Trinity Long Room Hub theme of Identities in Transformation, she also considered if there is a relation between stigmata and the concept of the individual in pre-modern Europe.
Professor Muessig gave a keynote lecture in the Trinity Long Room Hub on 18 November 2014 at 6.15pm entitled 'Responses to a most unusual miracle: understanding the stigmata in the Middle Ages'.
The Stigmata in Medieval and Early Modern Europe
